Humans of Blue Dot Part 3: Maryam and Nivaal

“You can talk about lots of injustices in the world, but ultimately, if we don’t have a clean environment, nothing else matters.”

“We believe that climate change is going to seriously affect our generation. A lot of kids have trouble envisioning future generations, but this isn’t about future generations; it will be within our own lifetimes. We can’t ignore it. If we don’t do something to change things it’ll only get worse.

People have a lot of dreams, like when I grow older I’ll get my dream job, I’ll have a family, I’ll travel. Our generation may have to give all that up because of choices that people made in our past. It’s scary and frustrating. I want to live in a world where I can do the things I’ve always wanted to do since I was a kid.

But we can’t blame each other. At the end of the day if we don’t take responsibility for ourselves and work together we’ll never get anywhere.

Working toward creating a better environment comes with ensuring that our laws are changed to support that as well. People can want to do something, but the only way to ensure our goals are achieved is through laws, which tell people, businesses and governments how to act. We need everyone on-board to save this Earth.

We believe that everyone deserves clean water, sanitation, air they can breathe and food that doesn’t make them sick. If we want to live longer, meaningful lives, a healthy environment means healthy humans.

When the two of us go outside to a park and have an unpolluted area to enjoy we realize how lucky we are. When we think about the people in our own province who don’t have that we realize how much work still needs to be done to make sure everyone can have what we have.”

This is the third post in a series of profiles highlighting Blue Dot supporters across Ontario, as part of our Ontario Environmental Bill of Rights campaign. Tell the Ontario government to strengthen our Environmental Bill of Rights here: action2.davidsuzuki.org/ontario-ebr-review.